\N UNDEVELOPED CHAPTER 



LIFEofCHRIST 



By IRE A DWELL WALDEN. 



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LIBRARY OF CONGRESS. 



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AN UNDEVELOPED CHAPTER 



LIFE OF CHBIST 



TEE GREAT MEANING OF THE WORD METANOIA, LOST 
IN THE OLD VERSION, UNRECOVERED 
IN THE NEW 



BY 
TREADWELL WALDEN 



NEW YORK 

THOMAS WHITTAKER 

2 & 3 Bible House 

1882 




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FAC S. 



This Essay, originally contributed to the Ameeican Chubch Kevtew, 
and afterward reprinted in a separate form, is now issued in still another 
edition to moot the demand which seems to have set in for it. 

The new title which has been given it — to which the other is now ap- 
pended as explanatory — exhibits better the character and scope of the sub- 
ject as one of general and popular interest; namely, the development of 
an aspect of the Life of Christ which has been strangely omitted in the 
many "Lives of Christ" that have appeared, but very naturally over- 
looked by the reader of the English translation of the New Testament. 

The Essay appeared when criticisms of the new version were in order, 
and was intended to draw attention to the continued mistranslation of 
"Metanoia," but this was only its passing intention, and a purely criti- 
cal and technical treatment was therefore avoided, in order that the sub- 
ject itself might develop its intrinsic and permanent interest. 

The reception with which it has been honored, not only by scholars, 
but by intelligent and thoughtful readers, within his own communion, 
and out of it, has more than repaid the writer for his carefulness in this 
respect. 

The Paper remains unaltered, although written under conditions which 
compelled condensation and brevity. Many parts are less amplified 
than they would otherwise have been, especially in the closing pages; but 
the suggestions remain, and the possible deductions from them are ap- 
parent. T. W. 

342 Madison Avenue, New York. 



The commendatory expressions printed at the close are extracts from 
letters received, either in courteous acknowledgment of copies mailed to 
the writers, or in spontaneous recognition of the importance of the sub- 
ject. Many other such letters have been received from sources person- 
ally unknown to the author; in one case offering to purchase a large 
part of the present edition for distribution. The passages that are given 
were not intended for publication, but are appended not only for 
the weightiness of their endorsement, but for their contributary char- 
acter, in one way or another, to the substance of the essay itself. 



THE GREAT MEANING OF THE WORD META- 
NOIA : LOST IN THE OLD VERSION, UNRE- 
COVERED IN THE NEW. 



METANOIA is the Greek word — and letter for letter 
an English one, if we desire it — which bears the sub- 
lime burden of the original proclamation of the Gospel. 
It represents the first utterance of John the Baptist as the 
herald of the Christ, and the first utterance of Jesus the 
Christ as the herald of the Kingdom of God. It was their 
summons to mankind, preceding the announcement of 
the power that was approaching, of the revelation that 
was at hand. If we recur to the image involved in the 
words " herald," " proclamation," — the image implied in 
the narrative — it was the note of a trumpet outside the 
walls, and the call of a messenger to open the gates. 

In order the better to get at its meaning, let us now 
imagine some one who has never read the English New 
Testament, and who has had no especial bias given to his 
ideas by any theological system. All, we will suppose, for 
him is a knowledge of Greek, and a spiritual instinct which 
will enable him to rise into the frequent transcendental 
meaning of the Greek of the New Testament. He knows 
enough to know that he is dealing with the record of a 
Divine revolution in the affairs of men, and that the human 
language to which the account was committed is struggling 
to utter adequately the depth of inspiration behind it. 



4 GREAT MEANING OF METANOIA. 

He knows that the record was committed to writing only 
after the bearings of the history were fully understood, and 
the conception of its meaning was fully matured. He knows 
that what is before him is a condensation as to events, and 
a translation as to ideas; in other words, if we confine the 
remark to the four Gospels, that the historical part is as 
brief as it is profound, and that the doctrinal part is not 
only briefly and profoundly expressed, but was transferred 
to the Greek from the vernacular in which it was at first 
expansively spoken. He is prepared therefore to see not 
only a representative depth in each event, but, especially, 
a comprehensive force in every cardinal word. 

In the very outset of the life of Christ he comes upon the 
word Metanoia and in a connection which gives it the 
all-prominent place. He takes in the significance of its 
position at once. It conveys the summons of the herald, 
and of the herald who was freighted with the good news 
which the whole New Testament afterwards unfolds. Here 
in epitome, he naturally thinks, must be all the "high Call- 
ing" of God. No word therefore in the New Testament 
can be greater than this. Hence he must interpret it as 
a condensed expression of what was originally said in large, 
and as an expression, also, which was fixed upon long after 
the event, when everything was understood, as the fit one 
to carry the great burden. If this is its anticipatory 
reach, if this is its heralding grasp, he naturally sets about 
inquiring what is its history and what its elementary weight. 

When we imagine such a fresh reader of the Greek 
Testament as this, we place ourselves in the situation to 
pursue his inquiry. 

The literal meaning of Metanoia, or rather, the nearest 
expression to it in English, is Change of Mind, a phrase too 
much worn by familiar use to be available as a rendering, 
but an idea capable of many equivalent variations in the 
English tongue. It will be more convenient, however, for 
our present purpose to employ the phrase as if its native 
force had not been thus impaired. What word is more 
expressive than " Change"? what more comprehensive 
than "Mind"? 

" Change," in the radical sense we here intend, when 
applied to the mind, ought to suggest something hardly 
short of a transmutation; not of essence, of course, but of 
consciousness. We understand by a change of place the 
occupation of another place ; a change of condition, an- 
other condition ; a change of form, another form. We can 



GREAT MEANING OF METANOIA. 5 

imagine the otherwise unchangeable man undergoing, in 
like manner, a change of mind ; what Coleridge coined the 
word trans mentation to express : a sort of mental transfig- 
uration, under which the mind, when placed in a new 
situation, thinks new thoughts, receives new impressions, 
forms new tastes, inclinations, purposes, develops new 
aptitudes ; such a change may be good or evil, but such a 
change is possible. 

For, what is the "Mind"? It is that spiritual part of us 
which receives and assimilates whatever it has an affinity 
for in the world outside, whether that world be spiritual 
or material. It is the whole group of faculties which com- 
pose the intelligence. It is sight and perception, thought 
and reflection, apprehension and comprehension, all that 
is popularly known as the intellect or understanding. But 
it also embraces more than this ; namely, a large portion 
of the moral and affectional nature. It occupies the realm 
of the heart. Thus it comes about that, in common speech, 
the terms " mind " and " heart " are often interblended, one 
overlapping the field of the other. We speak of the heart 
as if it were the thinking principle. It has its thoughts as 
well as its affections. We also speak of the mind as if it 
had feelings as well as perceptions. The will, too, seems 
to be as much at home in one as in the other. What the 
mind fancies it will do, it shortly resolves to do, is minded 
to do. What the mind also fastens its attention upon, it 
shortly fastens its love upon. We love with the whole 
mind, as well as with the whole heart, soul, and strength. 
When, therefore, we speak of the mind, we often mean the 
heart as well as the brain, but we never mean the heart 
without the brain. The mind proper is the masculine, 
intellectual element, strong and foremost, of which the 
heart is the feminine, affectional counterpart, always in 
attendance upon it, always at one with it. As "Man" is 
the generic name for Adam and Eve, so " Mind " is the 
generic name for this two-fold nature of man. 

When, then, "Mind" means so much, and "Change," 
may be made to mean so much, to speak of a " Change of 
Mind " is to stand on the verge of a great conception. 

Now we are introduced into the fullness of the Greek 
word Metanoia. Nous is the precise equivalent of mind. 
It is intellect, first and foremost, but it is intellect inter- 
blended, in its action, with the nature behind it. There 
is no mystic partition dividing the one from the other. It 
is the whole soul. It is mind, first, in the sense of percep- 



6 GREAT MEANING OF METANOIA. 

tion, knowledge, thought. It is mind, next, in the sense 
of feeling, disposition, will. And Nous is the body of the 
word Metanoia. Meta is a preposition which, when com- 
pounded with nous, means after. Metanoia is the after- 
mind : perception, knowledge, thought, feeling, disposition, 
will, afterward. The mind has entered upon a new stage, 
upon something beyond. If the prefix were pro, Pronoia, 
would mean perception before, thought before, a state of 
mind before experience ; but Metanoia is a state of mind 
after experience; the mental condition which has developed 
itself after an entirely new set of circumstances has 
encompassed and invaded the consciousness. Meta, there- 
fore, introduces the mind in the act of progress, a 
44 change " taking place either by evolution or by revolution ; 
development through any cause or in any form, when the 
mind is operated upon by considerations within or by con- 
ditions without.* 

In this statement of the capacity of the word we are 
drawing upon the literal elements of the compound 
exhaustively. We are obliged to do this because, as in the 
case of many other cardinal words in the New Testament, 
we cannot fall back upon its classical use for its Scriptural 
definition. In the former it was as weak an expression as 
our own " change of mind," and was employed in very much 
the same superficial way. It meant a change of percep- 
tion, of opinion, of purpose, of feeling in ordinary affairs, 



* A lay friend, after this paper was written, sent us the following r 
"The force of Meta is clearly this, viz., 'end for end,' or 'in the 

opposite direction,' or ' anew.' For the root of Meta is the 

English mid, and Meta is at bottom the English 'amid.' From this 
idea (one of situation), it progresses to another idea of direction; and 
in this use it has the sense of ' going right against,' in the sense of 
' striking fair and square,' or ' right in the middle.' Thus it gets the 
meaning oi'opftositeness of direction' and its force in Metanoia is to 
show that the action of the mind is now to be precisely in the opposite 
direction to what was before the case. ... I strongly wish I could 
provoke you to examine the word ' Metanoia ' philologically. In its 
philology lie many truths. ' Noia * appears to be a worn down form 
for 'gnoia,' (compare ' agnoia,' not ' anoia'), and the root seems to 
be 'gen,' meaning to beget, produce, or, as we say, conceive. From 
the same root is gennao, to beget. Noia (genoia) is the begetting, 
shaping, or production of anything in the inner and mental world ; 
thus all the operations or creations of the mind. The Latin gigno, 
genitor,' gno-sco, English ' knows,' are all from this root. The use of 
getting back to this philological meaning is to apply Metanoia to all 
the operations of the mind, whether of wish, thought, or action, will* 
understanding, life." 




GREAT MEANING OF METANOIA. 7 

with the natural consequence, sometimes, of a change of 
action. It was a current expression for any alteration of 
mind or view, and for whatever retrospective emotion 
might attend the fact. 

Its Scriptural definition comes to us under very grand 
circumstances ; the word is made over and enlarged by its 
environment, as if it had been re-inspired and been born 
anew. We are compelled to seek its meaning in the 
abstract, native force of the compound as thus vivified by 
the situation in which we find it. Its history in this 
respect is that of the language of the New Testament. 

When the Greek language, released by the conquests of 
Alexander the Great, three centuries and more before the 
Christian Era, spread over the known world and became 
the universal language, its forms, constructions and 
meanings met with curious modifications as it came in 
contact with the life and thought of the countries it had 
invaded. When in time it struck the Hebrew mind and 
religion at Alexandria, the Septuagint translation of the 
Old Testament rose gradually into being, but in the act 
of re-expressing ideas and principles so entirely out of the 
range of the Greek imagination, even that perfect and 
elaborate tongue mounted to a level and breathed an 
atmosphere it had never occupied before. It took, in many 
instances, a new color, a new character. There could 
have been no other result when the wealth of Divine 
revelation and of the story of the only true religion was 
committed for re-coinage to the exquisite resources of 
such a mint. It was now "the much refined gold " receiv- 
ing the stamp of the current common coin, but imparting 
to it a hitherto unknown value. Familiar words began to 
ring with a strange quality.* 

If this was so, nearly three centuries before the Christian 
Era, how must it have been when there came such a revela- 
tion to put into words, and such a revolution to put on 



♦The Septuagint represents only a half-way step in this assignment 
of the Greek language to the expression of Hebrew ideas. It did not 
wholly free itself from Greek influence. "The Seventy prepared the 
way in Greek," says Cremar, in his Preface to his Biblico-Theolog- 
ical Lexicon, " for the New Testament proclamation of saving truth. 
Fine as is their tact, it must be allowed that their language differs 
from that of the New Testament, as the well-meant and painstaking 
effort of the pupils differs from the renewing and creative hand of the 
Master." This shows itself in a less definite use of " Metanoia " than 
in the New Testament, where it is absolute. 



8 GREAT MEANING OF METANOIA. 

record, as was ushered in with the Christian religion? 
Upon the Greek language, also, fell the burden of the new 
Scriptures, and, this time, not by translation but by direct 
inspiration. The Pagan tongue had to wreathe itself into 
new phraseologies in order to give what utterance it could 
to ideas well-nigh unutterable. Words which had passed 
colloquially from mouth to mouth in the cities of Greece, 
words which were current in every-day speech everywhere, 
some whose meanings had never before been profound, 
others whose usage had worn them thin, now rose into a 
significance so powerful and so sacred that they could only 
be used as Temple-money by all ages to come. Expres- 
sions conveying a Divine meaning, now most familiar to us, 
were occasions of astonishment to Pagan and Jew alike 
when they were lifted into connections which transfigured 
them. Such, we know, were Faith, Hope, Love, Light, 
Truth, Life, Peace, Liberty ; such were Redemption, Atone- 
ment, Resurrection ; such were Saviour and Apostle, and 
many more which might be named. And such was 
Metanoia. So great as this was what Schleiermacher 
calls " the language-moulding power of Christianity." 

When Metanoia was taken up into the uses of the New 
Testament it came to mean, according to Archbishop 
Trench, "that mighty change in mind, heart, and life 
wrought by the Spirit of God, which we call Repentance!'* 

''Which we call Repentance !" What a diminuendo in 
the statement is here ! The swelling note suddenly gives 
up its breath and subsides into this ! It is we, the English- 
speaking world, he says, who call that "mighty change," 
" repentance." In other words, this is the rendering of it 
in our English Bible, and the accredited expression for it 
in all theological literature. 

Here, now, we come upon the practical and all-impor- 
tant point of this inquiry. For, putting these words, 
Metanoia and Repentance, side by side, is there not, on 
the contrary, a most radical divergency between them ? 
We are supposing the reader to be looking at the two 
with a perfectly fresh and unsophisticated perception. He 
already knows what the Greek "Metanoia" etymologically 
means ; let us now remind him what the Latin " Repentance" 
etymologically means. In its primary sense it fails to come 
anywhere near the other. Its central idea is pcenitentia, 
from poena, pain ; suffering in view of being liable to 



* See Trench's Synonyms of the New Testament p. 241 Sec. lxix. 



GREAT MEANING OF METANOIA. 9 

punishment : hence grief over an act for which satisfaction 
might be demanded. It would be fair to allow it also a 
secondary signification ; suffering in view of the badness 
of the act itself, without regard to its consequences. The 
prefix re, back, adds to this the idea of looking back with 
sorrow upon what has been done amiss. The word thus 
communes with the past, and represents an emotion only. 
This may be produced by a change of mind, and it may 
have influence in producing a change of mind. It may 
be potentially equal to amendment of life, but it is forcing 
the word to put that meaning into it, and more than 
forcing is necessary to make it " express that mighty 
change in mind, heart, and life, wrought by the Spirit of 
God" which Archbishop Trench admits is the meaning of 
Metanoia. At the best it can only hang on the skirts of 
the great Greek expression, for that means a movement of 
the whole mind forward, to which a looking backward is 
only incidental. Metanoia embraces any consideration 
which may cause the mind to change. It implies the 
whole circle of influences, repentance among them, which 
may affect or mold the mind. It necessarily brings about 
repentance as one of the results of its operation, but it 
brings about reformation of life as the great result of all. 

In saying this we do not intend to ignore the office of 
repentance in its strict sense, nor to put that all-necessary 
conviction of sin which characterizes the Christian Religion 
in any indirect relation to the Christian life. We are only 
questioning the word as a rendering of Metanoia ; as repre- 
senting only an emotion, not intellection in any way. Far 
back in the heart is the capacity for that emotion shut up, 
awaiting its proper occasions. We cannot conceive of its 
coming into activity unless the mind has been already 
engaged, but we can conceive of the mind being full of 
many processes, involving change of thought, or purpose, 
or feeling, wherein it has not been concerned at all. In 
this lies its first palpable incompetency to represent so 
comprehensive a word. But it may be said that it has 
been given a signification, theologically, which bears it into 
all that is equivalent to a change of mind, and even 
further than that, to amendment of life. It has, we are 
told, this recognized meaning among all evangelical author- 
ities, and is so understood by all practical Christians. If 
this were really so, and it had so burst the chrysalis of its 
etymology as to float in our consciousness arbitrarily and 
absolutely for as much as this, even then it were impracti- 



io GREAT MEANING OF METANOIA. 

cable to make it compass what is meant by Metanoia in 
the New Testament. The common uses of language drag 
it down. It cannot sustain itself at such a height. Not 
only are the meshes of its origin inseparable from it, but it 
is too much in the web of popular speech. No word is 
used more loosely even by theologians, except among 
very careful precisians. It slips out everywhere in untech- 
nical connections. It will back to its vernacular use. 
It will emerge from the popular dictionary, in its native 
and simple meaning, the richest and weightiest of all 
its familiar sisterhood of synonyms, to give force to 
the diction when sorrow of a godly kind is meant. 
Even in the Prayer Book it is convertibly employed 
with " penitence," and there is every indication that there 
nothing more is intended by it.* It has proved too strong 
and full for this in the penitential atmosphere of the 
Christian life, to be parted with for advanced dogmatical 
purposes only. Hence an element of confusion which robs 
it of dogmatical force. 

But there is another. In the Authorised Version we find 
it varying about in a way that requires often considerable 
spiritual discernment to tell where it stands for Metanoia, and 
where it does not; for there is another word, Metameleia, 
which exactly means repentance in its strict sense, and is 
also so rendered. This variation occurs frequently enough 
to make us wonder whether the translators attached any 
distinct doctrinal significance to it at all, and we might also 
be pardoned for wondering whether they were fully aware 



* A few instances, in the Prayer Book, not only of the synonymous 
use of " penitence " and " repentance," but also of their distinction 
from "amendment of life": — In the General confession: "Restore 
thou those who are penitent according to thy promises." In the 
larger Absolution, " Declare and pronounce. . . . being penitent 
. . . Wherefore . . . grant us true repentance." In the 
shorter Absolution : "Promised forgiveness of sins to all those who 
with hearty repentance and true faith turn unto Him." In the Litany : 
"Give us true repentance, and endue us with grace to amend our 
lives." Collect for Ash-Wednesday : " Dost forgive the sins of all 
those who are penitent, create and make in us new and contrite 
hearts." Third Ash-Wednesday prayer : "Who meekly acknowledge 
our vileness, and truly repent us of our faults." In the Communion 
Exhortation : " If with a true penitent heart . . repent ye truly 
of your sins past, have a lively and steadfast faith, amend your lives." 
" Ye who truly repent . . . and intend to lead a new life" In 
the Confession: "We acknowledge and bewail, &c, . . . We 
do earnestly repent, and are heartily sorry." In the Family Prayer: 
" Give them repentance and better minds" &c, &c. 



GREAT MEANING OF METANOIA. ir 

of the unique value of Metanoia wherever they found it.* 
When the English Scriptures themselves do not make a 
distinction it can hardly be expected that theological 
formularies will succeed in doing so. And, moreover, as 
the English Bible is written in the common language of 
the people, and, as such, belongs to our heritage of 
English literature, it blends itself more with this than with 
the technicalities of theology; its forms of speech are popu- 
lar, and what is meant by repentance in general literature, 
in current talk, and in dictionary definitions will neces- 
sarily be understood as intended by it. "Repentance" 
is a favorite word among all writers, especially those 
engaged in depicting life and action ; let anyone pause at 
it as it comes up in his general reading, and he will find 
what it is in the consciousness of the people, and how far 
short, therefore, it must always fall of the Biblical word 
Metanoia. 

But there is another and even more serious matter 
involved in this confusion of meaning. The use of the word 



*What are we to think, for instance, when we read that Judas 
"repented himself" (jieTafie^dslg), or how vivid must the pecu- 
liar sense of Metanoia — even the admitted one — have been in minds 
which could dismiss the following passage to be "understandedof the 
people " ? 

" For though I made you sorry with a letter, I do not repent 
(fierafie/LOjuat), though I did repent, (jj.era/j.e?,6/ijjv). Now I rejoice, not 
that ye were made sorry, but that ye sorrowed to repentance (jierdvoiav): 
.... For godly sorrow worketh repentance (juerdvoca), unto salvation 
not to be repented of (a./u.eTa/u.eX^Tov) ," ii. Cor., 7, 8, 10. Where is Met- 
anoia in its lone and comprehensive grandeur here ? In the original 
it stands nobly at the top in the ascending scale, but not in the ver- 
sion. Where, too, is " Evangelical repentance"? Certainly, in this 
place, not apparently above the other kind. 

Judas was unquestionably equal to repentance, as people generally 
understand it, but was, as unquestionably, far short of Metanoia as 
his Master understood it. S. Paul could very naturally repent of having 
written a letter which had caused pain, and as naturally reverse the 
feeling when he found that sorrow had produced so substantial a 
thing as a change of mind, the condition of all others that he most 
valued, in which he stood himself, which, when attained, was so fixed 
as to be equivalent to "salvation not to be repented of." Andyetthese 
two unequal words of the original are yoked under one and the same 
English word ; and this very English word is conveniently supposed 
by some to bear two senses, one sense natural and the other tech- 
nical ! 

The revisers, in this awkward passage, have translated (juerafi&of/ai) 
" regret," leaving fieravoia to " repentance." But Judas, it will be 
seen, Matt., 27, 3, still "repents himself"! His remorse, fruitful 
only of hemp, continues to be as respectably characterised, in the 



12 GREAT MEANING OF METANOIA. 

"repentence" for Metanoiahas thrown an almost exclusively 
emotional character around both the original proclamation 
of the Gospel and its present call. Despite himself the reader 
hears the " Repent ye ! " of John the Baptist and of the 
Saviour, like a cry, a note of danger, full of terror, amid 
which the hearts of the people stood still, instead of what 
it really was, the invocation of a mind, heart, and life which 
should befit such a glad and glorious change as the King- 
dom of Heaven on earth. If the call had really been 
" Repent ye ! " it would have been only an appeal to the 
feelings; and as, without question, a great deal of the call 
of the Gospel is to the conscience where it "looks back" to 
what has been done amiss, and for which punishment has 
been incurred, it is not strange that in many quarters this 
supposed appeal to the impenitent nature only, has been 
taken up as the burden of all preaching, all spiritual counsel; 
an appeal in their hands, often wrought up with terrific penal 
imagery, and then the fright which has ensued and its 
consequences have been accepted as the change of heart. 
Or, if not always so grossly mistaken, yet there is a 
tendency thus created to regard an emotional condition, 
a general passion of religious feeling, however induced, as 
the seat of efficacy with God, and as the only safe and 
promising state in which to begin and continue the Chris- 
tian life. Even more: this is sometimes considered as itself 
the Christian life. The result has often been the extraor- 
dinary incongruity of a life of zeal unaccompanied by a life 
of principle, penitence and faith developed in conspicuous 
measure in view of an ideal sinfulness ! and the living con- 
science, the practical right, sunk in Pharisaic forms which 
satisfy certain low standards of outward righteousness ! 
The Metanoia is not here. The profound ethical sense has 
not been awakened at all. Fear has no genuine ethical 



New Version, as if he had been " made sorry after a godly sort." So 
again, in Rom. II, 29, a/zeray/e/l^ra is rendered " without repent- 
ance." See also elsewhere. The revisers who have kept so carefully to 
S. Mark's oft-repeated " straightway," for the sake of uniformity, might 
also have kept these words apart, throughout, for a better reason. 

Dr. Roberts, in his "Companion to the Revised N. T," speaks of 
these two words as "most desirable to distinguish wherever that is 
possible. The one word," he says, " means simply to ' rue ' or 'regret,' a 
course which has been followed ; the other, implies that thorough 
change of mind which is implied in Christian repentance." But he 
continues, (and he must be referring to the assigned or the self-imposed 
limitations under which the revisers labored,)" unfortunately, it is not 
always possible to express the distinction in our language," (p, 124,) 



GREAT MEANING OF MET AN 01 A. i$ 

power. Sorrow has no sure ethical consequence. Excite- 
ment of any kind can bear, of itself, no ethical fruit. None 
of these can have respect with God. The only thing that 
can be regarded by Him is that which He has arranged 
everything to bring about in us : that spiritual perception 
of the right and the true which grows within and around a 
mind that is being gradually educated up to the Divine 
standard ; the nature wide open in front, not only looking 
behind, and receiving the whole counsel of God, not a 
part of it ; every faculty enlightened, every feeling inspired ; 
the entire man engaged ; conviction, not excitement ; 
earnestness, not impulse ; habitude, not paroxysm ; the 
heart tempered by the understanding, the understanding 
warmed by the heart ; this, the consummate and yet attain- 
able condition, this, the Metanoia, lived alike by Master 
and disciple, this, the " Mind" of Christ, and made possible 
to all by the Spirit of God — this is not conveyed in the 
" Repent ye ! " of our Gospels, nor does it come within 
the range of much of the teaching which falls on the 
world's ear. The all-encompassing grandeur of an announce- 
ment which takes in the whole of life, and calls upon man 
to enlarge his consciousness with the eternal and the 
spiritual, to live on the scale of another life, to let his 
character grow under this great knowledge, to let his 
conduct fall into the lines of the revealed Divine will — all 
this is lost. 

How did such an extraordinary mistranslation get 
into our New Testament ? It can be attributed to what 
we have already hinted at, and some evidence of which 
we have already given, namely, a failure to grasp the 
comprehensive and far-reaching character of the word. It 
came too early in the record for the translators to perceive 
its transcendental level. This they easily did with the other 
words we have named, which came later, and when they had 
mounted the swell of the ocean on which they had embarked. 
They did not catch this at once as the key-note of the New 
Testament, for the strain of the Old had not yet died away. 
And there was, besides, another music ringing in their ears : 
the sombre tones of a traditional theology which even 
the thunders of the Reformation had not drowned. 
The age, too, was a Latin-speaking age. The translators 
read their Greek through the lenses of a language whose 
grain was too coarse to admit its finer spirit. The Vulgate 
also was an authority older than any manuscript they 
possessed. They could not bring themselves to render its 



14 GREAT MEANING OF METANOIA. 

" Do penance," for Metanoeite, but they could not divest 
themselves of the impression of ' ' penitence " with which that 
rendering tinged the word. Still they showed some signs 
of divergence, and it led to controversy. Beza, for instance, 
had revolted so far as to get his composition of Metanoia 
wrong, and make it Meta and anoia, a change from a "want 
of mind," a change from " folly," and so rendered it resipis- 
centia in his Latin version, an act, however, which still 
showed his mental bias.* 

We have not the authorities at hand to prove the fact 
but it looks very much as if the English translators, who 
depended so much upon Beza and his Greek text, were mis- 
led by the same bias and compounded Metanoia in the same 
way. If they did, it explains everything. Their repent- 
ance were a very good rendering in that case, and hence, 
then, the uncertain sound with which their New Testament 
opens to this day. But what shall we say for the Revised 
Version if this be so ? The Revisers do not so compound it. 
Is it possible that so palpable a misinterpretation of the 
Greek has now been perpetuated because it had grown 
like a fossil into the substance of popular theology and so 
escaped recognition in the Greek as a fossil ? 

It may now be imagined with what interest and expect- 
ation we looked forward to the New Version, realizing full 
well the difficulty of reproducing the original in this place 
and elsewhere more faithfully, and of making a change so 

*The reader will be interested in getting a glimpse into this contro- 
versy when it started at the opening of the Reformation. " Luther, it will 
be remembered, first saw the practical value of philological study 
when he was puzzling over the expression poenitentiam agite, 'do 
penance,' which the Vulgate uses for the Greek word that in the English 
translation is rendered ' repent.' Was it possible, he said to himself, 
that Christ and the Apostles could really bid men do penance ? Did 
the New Testament really stand on the side of his opponents, and of 
all the gross corruptions which the doctrine of penance had intro- 
duced ? Melancthon solved this difficulty by showing to Luther that 
the Greek word fieravoelre, which Jerome had translated 'do penance,' 
really and etymologically meant ' change your mind.' From that 
moment the Reformation entered into a conscious alliance with the 
New Learning." 

Prof. W. Robertson Smith. "The Old Testament in the Jewish 
Church. — Lect. II. 

The Genevan version, a Continental and more independent one, with 
which the Authorized Version ran in rivalry for nearly fifty years, ren- 
dered Metanoeite "Amend your lives." The Authorized itself has a 
marginal rendering in S. Matthew's Gospel alternative to "fruits 
meet for repentance": "answerable to amendment of life ": omitted, 
however, in the New Version, 



GREAT MEANING OF METANOIA. 15 

startling, but hoping that, at the least, a marginal render- 
ing would indicate the literal alternative, or a glossarial 
note define the Greek expression in a way that would go 
far to correct the English one. But the Revision flows on, 
making a ripple of change in almost every verse, yet with 
not a sign of perturbation over this sunken rock. Neither 
a light-ship nor a buoy warns of a spot where there has 
been shipwreck before now. 

We understand, however, that it was the subject of dis- 
cussion among the revisers, and that the matter was finally 
passed by, not because the present rendering was satis- 
factory, but because no one equivalent English word could 
be found comprehensive enough for the purpose. What 
then has been so long lost in' the Old Version, remains 
unrecovered in the New because of a reluctance to employ 
a paraphrase ! The poverty of our language, in this res- 
pect, is to keep us poor. Or, it may be, something else 
was at the bottom of it, symptoms of which are apparent 
in other instances. It may have been the reluctance of 
that kind of conservatism which prefers not to disturb 
traditional notions or long-established formularies. We 
comfort ourselves, however, with the thought that the 
New Version is not a finality, but only tentative to that 
which shall yet meet the brave demand of the nineteenth 
century. What we have is a bold and noble move, but the 
whole of English Christendom are in council over it now, 
and suggestions and criticisms will flow in for some years 
to come ; changes of view also will take place, making 
the way clearer and easier to a more fearless and absolute 
transfer of the original into our native tongue. 

We feel prepared, at least, to say, with regard to the 
present subject, that the necessary employment of a para- 
phrase should not be an occasion for hesitation in making 
so important an alteration. We can leave it to the candid 
reader to judge which is the most objectionable ; a resort 
to a paraphrase which really translates, or the preference 
for a technical word, to say nothing of an uncertain one, 
which is always in need of translation. Better, even, were 
the bald phrase " change of mind," with an explanation 
which would give it fulness and dignity, than the mislead- 
ing rendering we have to put up with now. There is no 
fear but that a nobler expression can be framed, for S. 
Paul himself, as we shall shortly see, found no difficulty in 
ringing many changes upon the word, which melt very 
kindly into simple English. 



1 6 GREAT MEANING OF METANOIA. 

So far as we have now gone we have" probably done more 
to awaken the reader's attention to the question of the 
inadequacy of " repentance" as a rendering of Metanoia, 
than to convince him that the position is rightly taken. We 
must go for the evidence of this to the Scriptures them- 
selves ; but, in doing so, let us recur first to our imaginary 
scholar whom we have supposed to be receiving his impres- 
sion freshly from the original. Happily, as it turns out, we 
are not obliged to go so far as to imagine such a scholar, for 
the impressions of an actual one of that kind came recently 
to our hand which are in such singular coincidence with the 
view we are trying to present that we venture to quote 
them entire. We are glad also to avail ourselves of his 
brief dissertation as a guide in directing a part of the 
inquiry. 

That accomplished master of Greek, De Quincey, (who, 
if any one ever did, held his mind clear and free in 
a scholarly consciousness of the transcendent atmosphere 
into which the Greek language rose when it was summoned 
to meet the necessities of Christian truth and the exigen- 
cies of Divine inspiration) was, it seems, actually confronted 
by an intelligent friend, with the very question which is 
now engaging us. The record of it will be found is his 
Autobiographic Sketches.* 

" Lady Carbury," he writes, " one day told me that she 
could not see any reasonable ground for what is said 
of Christ, and elsewhere of John the Baptist, that he 
opened his mission by preaching ' Repentance.' Why 
4 Repentance ' ? Why then, more than at any other time ? 
Her reason for addressing this remark to me was that she 
feared there might be some error in the translation of the 
Greek expression. I replied, that, in my opinion, there was, 
and that I had myself always been irritated by the entire 
irrelevance of the English word, and by something very 
like cant, on which the whole burden of the passage is 
thrown. How was it any natural preparation for a vast spirit- 
ual revelation that men should, first of all, acknowledge 



*"He (De Quincey) passed through a number of schools and . . . 
was distinguished for his eminent knowledge of Greek. At fifteen he 
was pointed out by his Master (himself a ripe scholar) to a stranger 
in the remarkable words. ' That boy could harangue an Athenian 
mob better than you or I could address an English one. ... In 
this, as in the subtilty of the analytical power, De Quincey must have 
strongly resembled Coleridge." Harriet Martineau, " Biographical 
Sketches," p. 95. 



GREAT MEANING OF METANOIA. 17 

any special duty of repentance ? The repentance, if any 
movement of that nature could be intelligently supposed 
called for, should more naturally follow this great revolu- 
tion — which as yet, both in its principle and in its purpose 
was altogether mysterious — than herald it, or ground it. 
In my opinion the Greek word, Metanoia, concealed a most 
profound meaning — a meaning- of prodigious compass — 
which bore no allusion to any ideas whatever of repentance. 
The Meta carried with it an emphatic expression of its 
original idea — the idea of transfer, of translation ; or, if we 
prefer a Grecian to a Roman appareling, the idea of a 
metamorphosis. And this idea, to what is it applied ? Upon 
what object is the idea of spiritual transfiguration made to 
bear ? Simply upon the noetic or intellectual faculty — the 
faculty of shaping and conceiving things under their true 
relations. The holy herald of Christ, and Christ Himself, 
the finisher of prophecy, made proclamation alike of the 
same mysterious summons, as a baptism or rite of initia- 
tion, namely, MeravoeiTe — Henceforth transfigure your the- 
ory of moral truth ; the old theory is laid aside as infinitely 
insufficient ; a new and spiritual revelation is established. 
Metanoeite ! Contemplate moral truth as radiating from a 
new centre ; apprehend it under transfigured relations. 

"John the Baptist, like other earlier prophets, delivered 
a message which, probably enough, he did not himself 
more than dimly understand, and never in its full compass 
of meaning. Christ occupied another station. Not only 
was He the original Interpreter, but He was Himself the 
Author — Founder at once, and Finisher — of the great 
transfiguration applied to ethics, which He and the Bap- 
tist alike announced as forming the code of the new revo- 
lutionary era now opening its endless career. The human 
race was summoned to bring a transfiguring sense and 
spirit of interpretation (Metanoia) to a transfigured ethics. 
An altered organ to an altered object. This is by far the 
grandest miracle recorded in Scripture. No exhibition of 
blank power — not the arresting of the earth's motion — not 
the calling back of the dead to life, can approach in 
grandeur to this miracle which we daily behold ; namely, 
the inconceivable mystery of having written and sculp- 
tured upon the tablets of man's heart a new code 01 moral 
distinctions, all modifying — many reversing — the old ones. 
What would have been thought of any prophet, if he should 
have promised to transfigure the celestial mechanics; if he 
had said, I will create a new pole-star, a new Zodiac, and 



1 8 GREAT MEANING OF METANOIA. 

new laws of gravitation ; briefly, I will make a new earth 
and new heavens ? And yet a thousand times more awful 
it was to undertake the writing of new laws upon the spir- 
itual conscience of man. Metanoeite ! (was the cry from 
the wilderness). Wheel into a new centre your moral sys- 
tem — geo-centric has that system been up to this hour — 
that is, having earth and the earthly for its starting point; 
henceforth make it he 'Ho- centric, (that is with the Sun, or 
the heavenly, for the principle of motion)."* 

This brilliant statement we believe to be true as far as it 
goes ; but the heralding was not all a bare summons. 
It was accompanied by every credential which the Sum- 
moner could show ; not only the credential of signs and 
wonders, but of teachings, which evidently enclosed far 
more than was apparent, which held out an ulterior mean- 
ing to be disclosed in due time ; teachings which penetrated 
to the very soul, and moved the heart of the age wherever 
they were heard. Metanoia was the theme — the pro- 
gramma — projected, and everything that was afterward 
spoken wrought out its meaning upon the mind of the 
time, sensibly or insensibly preparing and making ready its 
way. It was the great harbinger word of the Gospel, bear- 
ing witness to the " Light." So,, while, as De Quincey 
says, it was a prodigious assumption, the assumption of a 
power to work the most stupendous of miracles, it, at the 
same time, assumed the capacity in man to make the mira- 
cle possible. Christ would wait for the word to tell. This 
was His method throughout, even in special instances. For 
example : " Destroy this temple," said He, at the very out- 
set, to those who questioned His authority to expel the 
traders, " and in three days I will raise it up ! " It was 
only after Pentecost that the Evangelist was able to add : 
" He spoke of the temple of His body." But just as that 
declaration sunk into their minds, and worked uncon- 
sciously there ; indeed, worked in the minds of some of 



* De Quincey 's works "Autobiographic Sketches, " Vol I, p. 434. 

In a closing note to the "Supplementary Essay on the Essenes," he 
recurs to the subject again : " Metanoia — which word I contend can- 
not properly be translated Repentance; for it would have been pure 
cant to suppose that age or any age, as more under a summons to 
repentance than any other assignable. I understand by Metanoia a 
revolution of thought — a great intellectual change — in the accepting 
a new centre for all moral truth from Christ ; which centre it was 
that subsequently caused all the offence of Christianity to the Roman 
people." 



GREAT MEANING OF METANOIA. 19 

them till it reappeared three years after as one of the taunts 
flung up at Him on the Cross : " Thou that destroyest the 
Temple, and buildest it in three days, save thyself!" so the 
summons to a mysterious Metanoia must have kept their 
whole consciousness thrilled with the sense of a strange 
experience, and as strange expectation, dumb and unintel- 
ligible, perhaps, but preparing the ground for what was 
to be sown in it. 

What could have helped a great scheme of progress bet- 
ter than to put a word of prophecy at the beginning of it? 
What could have helped the teacher more than a pre- 
liminary word which was equivalent to an inspiration in its 
power to stir every fibre, and create a boundless desire to 
learn and to know ? Such an all-permeating word was like 
the slow fusion of the metal for the mould and the slow 
cooling of it while it was assuming a new form. It was 
proclaiming a change of mind, and creating it at the same 
moment, by drawing the subject of it into active and intel- 
ligent participation. 

De Quincey has given the weight of his authority, as a 
scholar, to the intellectual bearing of the word Metanoia, 
in the extraordinary use to which it is applied in the New 
Testament. But he might have included in his statement 
its equal and coincident range in the sphere of the moral 
and affectional nature. Nous, as Ave have already said, 
corresponds perfectly to mind. It allows our conception 
of an intellectual consciousness to let itself down into the 
whole possible profundity of a spiritual consciousness. This 
is, perhaps, implied in what he says, and it is as well that 
the stress was laid by him on the intellectual character 
of the expression, inasmuch as this is the very point that 
is most in danger of being lost sight of, and is of vast 
importance in any complete consideration of the subject. 

The office of the intellect in the apprehension of Divine 
truth is not given its due consequence. "The noetic 
faculty, or the faculty of shaping and conceiving things 
under their true relations," to use De Quincey's expresson, 
is foremost in all human action — it is first. The fact of the 
dependence of our whole nature upon it is almost too 
palpable to dwell upon, and yet the instantaneous flash 
with which outward things sometimes pass through it into 
the heart often leads us to ignore the office of the medium 
by which they entered. 

Take a common instance of this unconsciousness. The 
hymn which, as it is sung, suffuses the soul with religious 



20 GREAT MEANING OF METANOIA. 

emotion, has gone, in less than the twinkling of an eye, 
through a full and varied intellectual process of which the 
soul has taken no notice. First, the perception of its 
meaning ; next, the perception of its beauty as an expres- 
sion of the meaning to the degree that sensibility is 
excited ; next, the susceptibility to its musical rendering 
which intensifies the sensibility ; next, the throng of asso- 
ciations which comes, partly from the memory, partly from 
the imagination, and, like the legendary angel of Bethesda, 
stirs the waters of feeling welling up beneath — these are 
purely intellectual. We are hardly aware, unless we watch 
the mechanism of our nature, how much and how con- 
tinually the nous, in its primary sense, is occupied in convey- 
ing inspiration to the heart. Memory is forever pouring its 
store into this realm ; knowledge of every kind is daily 
streaming in by the portals of the senses, passing through 
the strangest transmutations as it is touched by the reason, 
or the fancy, till it reaches the sanctuary, and mounts into 
something which takes hold of the entire nature. But 
then the first has become the last, and the last first. That 
only which reaches, engrosses, and moves the heart, is that 
which works into the essence of the life ; and that which 
remains intellectual alone is only on the way to its practi- 
cal end, an abortive thing if it gets no further. 

The intellect may be the Beautiful Gate, even, literally, 
Solomon's Porch, but the heart is the vital centre, the 
Sanctuary of the temple. All the outer courts point toward 
this, the precinct of the spirit. It is only when the 
thoughts which throng them like the multitude, it is only 
when the purposes which minister in them like the priests, 
have actually lit the altar fire and gone behind the veil, 
that the Divine uses of the temple are manifested and make 
their return. And yet it is none the less true that without 
these courts of approach the altar would never burn, the 
hidden power within would never be evoked. It is the 
intellect which awakens that inmost interior. It receives 
the crowd in its magnificent areas, it reports the situation 
outside, and then the secret heart, brooded upon by the 
Spirit of God, takes in the situation ; the mystic circuit is 
complete ; upon that heartfelt consciousness the character 
is formed, and upon that character, the life. It is a Divine 
dependence ordained in the structure of our nature, and 
the process of it ought to be vividly before our minds if we 
would understand the operation of the Metanoia. 

We have used this apostolic figure of the " temple of 



GREAT MEANING OF METANOIA. 21 

God," not only to give as graphic illustration as possible 
to a manifold fact of our nature under any circumstances, 
but also to consecrate the fact to the sacred relation in 
which we are discussing it, and bring it, besides, into the 
very connection in which S. Paul used the metaphor. 

It is only when the situation is a Divine one that man is 
found to be the temple of God. So long as he confronts 
only the spirit of the world, whether it be in the nature of 
things or in the nature of men, he is like Herod's temple, 
without the Shekinah. He is only in partial use ; his true 
occupation is gone, or has not come. But when "the Lord 
visits His temple," then the wisdom of the world finds 
no longer entrance, but " the wisdom of God in a mys- 
tery." In that change of situation comes the wondrous 
change of mind. " Eye hath not seen," exclaims the Apostle, 
"nor ear heard, neither have entered the heart of man 
the things which God hath prepared for them that love 
Him" — not in the next world only, but in this. "Now," 
he continues, "we have received not the spirit of the 
world, but the Spirit which is of God, that we might knozv 
the things that are freely given to us by God." " Know 
ye not that ye are the temple of God, and that the Spirit 
of God dwelleth in you ? Let no man deceive himself. 
If any man among you seemeth to be wise in this world, 
let him become a fool that he may be wise." Such was to 
be the utter dispossession of himself, such the utter evacua- 
tion of the wisdom of the world, such the Metanoia, when 
he came to know "Christ, the power of God, and the wis- 
dom of Godr S. Paul, when charged with a message like 
this, may well have scorned to come with the "excellency 
of speech or of wisdom " which then captivated the imagina- 
tion of men, but no man ever lived who, " in demonstra- 
tion of the Spirit and power," made a greater appeal to the 
intellect, more riveted the intelligent attention of the 
world, and elicited the admiration of the finest intellects 
the world has known. If ever a man was chosen because 
of his intellectual power, and if ever a man appealed to the 
understanding and struck home through every faculty and 
intuition which the understanding could summon, it was he. 

If we have made our meaning clear — and much that we 
have said has an ulterior reference which will make it 
clearer — the reader is now prepared to take up the historic 
moment when the Gospel was inaugurated, and to con- 
template the stupendous change of outward situation 
which then ensued. What an epoch it was ! What a 



22 GREAT MEANING OF METANOIA. 

meaning lay in the Metanoia that was then proclaimed \ 
" The noetic faculty,or the faculty of shaping and conceiv- 
ing things under their true relations," entered now upon 
its work, and the issue was to be a revolution in the whole 
human conception of life. Christ substituted His own 
wisdom for the wisdom of the world, and what we see 
recorded in the New Testament is, first, the natural pro- 
cess of the Metanoia : this wisdom working through the 
intelligence upon the heart, the conscience and the life ; 
and next, the thoroughness of the result in forming a new 
spiritual consciousness in that age. 

It was, indeed, the " beginning of miracles" : the water 
was turned into wine. What else could have taken place 
from His presence at the bridal where Heaven and Earth 
were made one ? The change was now inevitable from 
the lower into the Higher, from the temporal into the 
Eternal, from the natural into the Spiritual, from the 
human into the Divine. Life took a new character and 
another meaning when He drew near. It was found to be 
His life. The letter of the Old Testament dissolved into 
the spirit of the New. The law disappeared, and the 
righteousness which is by faith, red as the blood of a great 
Sacrifice, was found instead, filling the vessels of human 
purification to the brim. The good wine had been kept 
until now ! 

Did ever the world see so mighty and so radical a revo- 
lution as came upon it then ? Judaism gave way to a 
universal religion. The Mosaic night broke into the dawn 
of the perfect day. The Fatherhood of God was revealed 
to all men, and a brotherhood with the Son of God ! Now 
were they the sons of God ! partakers of the Divine nature ! 
This world was discovered to be within the boundaries of 
the other world, and death was merged into a resurrection 
of the dead ! Righteousness and truth were to prevail, 
for the power of sin had been destroyed ! And the efficacy 
of all this lay in the person of the Christ. It was He who 
gave all this light. The order of human life reversed 
itself in Him. All conduct was to flow from a spirit with- 
in, not by a law without. Selfishness was turned into self- 
surrender and self-sacrifice. The affections were to be set 
upon things above, not on things on the earth. The spirit 
was everything, the flesh profited nothing. In all human 
action was to be the consciousness of Eternity ; in all 
intercourse of man with man no less than the magnanimity 
of God 



GREAT MEANING OF METANOIA. 23 

As we said in the beginning, what strikes us first, as we 
open our New Testament, is the commanding position in 
which we find the word Metanoia. It is the great initia- 
tory word of the first three Gospels. However they may 
vary in the way they begin the story they unite in the way 
they introduce this. The summons to mankind, first by 
the Baptist, next by Christ, is to a Metanoia — a change 
of mind. And when we come to the fourth Gospel, with 
its interior view of the life of Christ, it is to discover it, also 
at the very outset, in another form, in an expression which, 
characteristically of that Gospel, carries us into the very 
depths of the self-same idea. 

Let us combine the four accounts. Now we shall see it 
in its true perspective ; that is successively in its intellect- 
ual, ethical, and spiritual development. 

In the very beginning we have the Christ, half-philoso- 
phically, half-spiritually depicted as the " Logos," the 
"Word"; then, as the " Light of men." What greater 
implication could there be that Christianity was directed 
through the understanding to the heart ? Next, John the 
Baptist is spoken of as the witness to this Light. He was 
"to go before the face of the Lord to prepare His ways." 
The method of his preparation was to produce, first, a 
powerful, controlling impression upon their intelligence. 
His personal appearance, his clothing like that of an ancient 
prophet, his ascetic look, his secluded life, the " voice," 
out of Isaiah, with which he spoke, the burden of his first 
announcement — all were in keeping, and were calculated 
to rouse the whole nation. The past came vividly back to 
their memory ; the future was as vividly, though myster- 
iously and portentously, brought to their imagination. He 
came "proclaiming a baptism of Metanoia, for the remis- 
sion of sins." His vocal summons was that of a herald. 
"Metanoeite! Take a new mind upon you, for the king- 
dom of Heaven is at hand ! " And, as if his voice were 
not enough, he spoke also by this symbol whose meaning 
was universally known to be a change from an old con- 
dition into a new, even such a change, as they esteemed it, 
as that from dark Paganism to glorious Judaism. It now 
meant a change from dark Judaism to some far exceeding 
glory. It meant a change that would really, not typically, 
bring with it a remission of sins. He thus expressively 
coupled this sign of a change of condition with his sum- 
mons to a change of mind. It was no other than "a bap- 
tism of Metanoia." 



24 GREAT MEANING OF METANOIA. 

His summons of the Pharisees and Sadducees to a change 
of mind was as revolutionary and as radical as it well could 
be. In this he struck right at their views. " Think not to 
say within yourselves, ' We have Abraham to our Father,' 
for I say unto you that God is able of these stones to raise 
up children unto Abraham." Even now the axe is lying at 
the root of the trees. There must be fruit worthy of the 

Metanoia ttjq fieravoiaq. 

The effect of these utterances upon the people was as 
distinctly intellectual as it was emotional. Their whole 
intelligence was roused to such a degree that they not only 
went down into the baptism and sought practical counsel 
for their future lives, but they were thrown into a state of 
" expectation." They were excited to inquiry. " All men 
mused in their hearts of John, whether he were the Christ 
or not." Priests and Levites came down from Jerusalem 
to ask him, " Who art thou ? that we may give an answer 
to them that sent us. What sayest thou of thyself ?" 

Up to this point he had not announced the Christ, but 
he had awakened every thought and association which 
could suggest Him. He would seem to have gathered this 
intense concentration of attention upon himself in order 
to acquire additional power in portraying the greater 
grandeur of Him who was coming. He made himself the 
dark backgroud of the picture he now drew. He was but 
a voice. " One mightier than I cometh." He himself was 
not worthy to stoop down and unlace His sandals. "I, 
indeed, baptize you with water, but He shall baptize you 
with the Holy Spirit and with fire." He is the real Bap- 
tizer ; the Metanoia that is to come by Him is to come by 
the Spirit of God, and by something more purifying than 
water. With Him that Baptism and the Metanoia are one. 
What I am, what I teach, what I summon you to, what I 
baptize with are but foreshadows of Him." 

Powerful as was this picture, John drew still another. It 
was based upon a familiar scene in their everyday life. This 
Coming One was the Great Harvester, whose winnowing 
fork should stir humanity to its depths, as so much grain 
on the threshing floor, and throw it against the currents 
of the Spirit. The wheat would fall at His feet and go 
into His garner, but the stubble should fly beyond Him to 
become only fuel for the fire. 

He painted these two strong pictures upon their imagi- 
nations, pictures whose parabolic force would sink pro- 
foundly into their minds. Vague conceptions were they as 



GREAT MEANING OF METANOIA. 25 

yet — as vague as the idea of a Metanoia itself must have 
been — but there was a far-reaching significance in them 
which, as now united with the call to a change of mind, 
time would reveal and the reality would confirm. The seed 
of much thinking was sown, and a kind of thinking that 
was sure to work its way into the life. 

It was not until after all this — not, indeed, until Jesus had 
come and been baptized — that John made known the fact 
that his own baptism had had a still deeper purpose than had 
yet been suspected. Not only was it a sign of the Metanoia 
in view of the impending change, not only did it convey a 
typical intimation of Him who should bring about this 
change, but it had all along been the designed occasion 
when the Christ Himself, in bodily presence, should be 
made known ! John had been utterly in the dark as to who 
He was. He was in even a greater state of expectation than 
the people. All he knew was that " He that sent him to 
baptize with water, the same had said to him, Upon whom- 
soever thou shall see the Spirit descending and remaining 
upon Him, the same is He who baptizeth with the Holy 
Spirit." "I knew Him not," he said afterward, "but in 
order that (iva) He should be made manifest unto Israel, 
for this cause came I (^a tovto fj'keov k-yty baptizing with 
water."* 

This remarkable statement cannot be too strongly 
reiterated in view of the significance we may attach to it. 
The symbol, Baptism, was put into John's hands not only, 
as we say, to express the impending Metanoia, the change 
of mind to which the people were summoned, but also 
to be the means by which the Christ, the consummate 
agent of it all, should be made known to John him- 
self and to the people. Everything was in suspense until 
this supreme moment of perception and knowledge came. 
The Metanoia was not at the full until //i?was "made 
manifest." The fact further defines the word. John's mind 
was waiting to be informed. The mind of Israel was wait- 
ing to be informed. Both were yet in the Pro-noia. They 
were in the line of that information, but the knowledge 
had not come. They stood on the verge of the Metanoia. 
When it should dawn, it would affect every mind according 
to its previous condition. The change would be either an 
evolution or a revolution. But, in either case, it would be a 
change of mind, an advance into a new stage of conscious- 

* See the New Version in loc t 



26 GREAT MEANING OF METANOIA. 

ness, a confirmation of what had already been dimly dis- 
cerned, or a contradiction of what had hitherto been 
wrongly imagined. The one was John's position, ready for 
any development. The other, in different degrees and 
forms, was the position of the people. 

Let it still be borne in mind that this was known as " a 
baptism of the Metanoia." Now Jesus Himself was to 
enter the rite. If it were "the baptism of repentance," as 
it is rendered, why was He there ? What had it to do with 
Him, or He with it ? This has been the puzzle of theolo- 
gians, who labor under the prepossession of the old render- 
ing. But that He should participate in and be the central 
glory of a baptism of the Change of Mind, in the large 
sense in which we understand that expression, would be 
sublimely consistent with His character as the Christ ; and 
it would, moreover, give us an inner glimpse of His life, 
which would ally it still more with our own. We have 
reason to think that Jesus himself was in the background 
with the others, personally known to John, yet spiritually 
unknown to him, personally known to many, yet spiritually 
undiscerned by them, personally known to Himself in the 
deepest consciousness of what He might be, perceiving in 
Himself all the marks of the Christ, yet with that con- 
sciousness awaiting the seal of the Divine confirmation. 
Israel, John, Jesus, were all, in these different degrees, in 
the Pronoia — the mind before it had crossed into perfect 
intelligence. The Baptism of the Metanoia was therefore 
to be the manifestation of Christ to Himself as well as to 
them. The event declares this to be the very fact. "When 
all the people had been baptized," then He also entered 
by the self-same ceremonial gate into the new order of 
things : the kingdom of Heaven which was at hand. 
What happened ? As he came up out of the water the 
heavens were rent asunder, " and lo ! a voice from Heaven, 
saying, ' Thou art — this is — My Beloved Son, in whom I am 
well pleased !' ' " And I saw," said John, " and bare record 
that this is the Son of God ! " * 



*" By this anointing of the Spirit,'" says Olshausen, "the gradual 
development of the human consciousness in Jesus attained its height 
* * * The Baptism, accordingly, was the sublime season when 
the character of the Xpiardg, which was dormant in the gradually 
developing child and youth, now came forth and expanded itself. 
Compare the remarkable words in Justin, Dial. Tryph. Cum. Jud., p. 
226: 'Though the Messiah has been born and lives, he is unknown, 
and does not even know himself, nor has any power, until Elias shall 
come and anoint him and make him known to all.'" — Olshausen 's 
Com., N. T., vol. I., p. 271. 



GREAT MEANING OF METANOIA. 27 

What a Metanoia was there, to both Jesus and John ! 
The Pronoia was over with both ! The boundary had 
been crossed ; the veil had been lifted. The whole great 
advance had been made in a moment of time. Jesus, filled 
with the immensity of a now confirmed consciousness, 
" filled with the Spirit," went into the wilderness to breast 
the trial which should come to Him as the announced Son 
of God. John, emerged from the wilderness, into the full 
light of the same Metanoia, into the blaze of the very con- 
summation amid which he was to wane out of sight, to 
await the return of Jesus, and to say, "Behold the Lamb 
of God ! This is He of whom I spake ! " 

And what a Metanoia had come also upon the disciples 
of John and upon Israel ! With Jesus and with John the 
Change of Mind, as we say, was in the form of develop- 
ment, an evolution from one state of consciousness into 
another. But upon Israel it had come like a change from 
darkness to light, from ignorance to knowledge, a revolu- 
tion of consciousness, an inversion, as time went on, of all 
that they had ever thought, or believed, or felt.* 

But let us return to the great final scene at the Baptism, 
which shed its splendor over the rite. The virtue never 
left it which entered it then. Henceforth it was conse- 
crated into a sacrament, forever allied with a change of 
mind and of life. Baptism, as it once defined the Metanoia, 
was always to define it. For go now from the first three 
Gospels into the fourth. What do we find there, — also in 
the outset of the record ? We hear our Lord discoursing 
of a New Birth — a birth from above, a birth by the Spirit, 
and this as accompanying a birth by water ! Even as it 
had been with the Master so was it to be with the disciple. 
The full revelation of a sonship in God, was to break upon 
him, also, after he had ascended through the outward rite ! 
Then the Spirit would meet the mind openly, and renew it 
day by day. It also was to change as it learned, as it was 
tempted, and as it suffered. Where is the harmony of 
the gospels, where is the harmony of the Gospel itself, 
unless the '■ Baptism of Metanoia" proclaimed by John the 
Baptist to the people, was the same as the "Born of water 



*Was there no meaning in the event, when after three years of 
this transfiguring experience, suddenly "the fashion of his counten- 
ance was altered, and His face did shine as the sun," to a group of 
His disciples on the mount, and the divine words, uttered at His bap- 
tism, were uttered again ? Was there no meaning in it when the 
whole truth and reality of that vision of change burst upon all of them 
in His resurrection from the dead ? 



28 GREAT MEANING OF METANOIA. 

and of the Spirit " announced by Jesus to Nicodemus ? So 
here, in the profoundest of the Gospels, we have the pro- 
foundest exposition of the word. 

We are now fairly brought to the moment when Jesus 
began to proclaim and to say, ''The time is fulfilled and 
the Kingdom of God is at hand, Metanoeite ! Take upon 
you a New Mind, and believe the Glad Tidings !" 

What a new and concentrated light falls upon the life 
of Christ if we look upon it as the process or action of 
creating the Metanoia ! With this single idea in view 
His whole method comes definitely before us. It was all 
comprised in the terms of the above announcement : 
" The Divine epoch of the world has come ! God is now 
to reign on earth ! Heaven is all about you ! Sin, sor- 
row, death, are no more ! Peace, joy, everlasting life are 
yours ! The night is far spent : the Day is at hand. 
Awake ! Awake ! All is changed ! Change ye ! Be- 
lieve not the world : believe Me ! I bring you good tid- 
ings of great joy !" 

Supernatural as this revelation was, it was, like Him who 
brought it, subject to the order of nature in human nature, 
when delivered to mankind. That order, as we have said, is 
this : all inward change proceeds from outward change. 
A change of outward situation induces a change of mental 
consciousness ; a change of mental consciousness induces 
a change of moral disposition ; a change of moral disposi- 
tion induces a change of outward life. Give a man a new 
consciousness and he will develope a new nature. Upon 
this natural order of the Metanoia did Christ proceed. He 
first revealed a change of circumstance : He filled the 
soul with knowledge altogether new. He communicated 
to it ideas and inspired it with principles which brought 
about it the horizon of another world. Then, step by step, 
came the dispossession of the old nature till it had reached 
the vital centre, the seat of the conscience and the will, 
and then, step by step, the moral transformation began. It 
was " the expulsive power of a new affection." The 
" world " was cast out like a deaf and blind spirit, and the 
-once Divine heart was left cleansed and free. And this 
was done, as we say, by occupying, first, the intellectual 
nature of man, by engaging the whole power of his under- 
standing with the truth. But the nature of that truth was 
such that it struck through to the heart. Like the hymn 
we hear, the intellectual process, however full, was unno- 
ticed in the greater fulness of the spiritual impression pro- 



GREAT MEANING OF METANOIA. 29 

duced. It came from Him on fire with the vividness of His 
own consciousness, and its illumination, as well as its 
inspiration, was thrown through these out-looking win- 
dows into the inmost chambers of the spirit. But these 
intellectual windows were the first to blaze under the light 
that poured into them. His opening summons to the 
Metanoia was addressed to the intelligence, and, without 
an awakened intelligence, it could not have moved the 
people as it did. All His subsequent preaching then 
became an education, an education by gradual revelation. 
He was known as the " Teacher." He called His followers 
His " disciples." " Every one," He said, " that hath learned 
of my Father cometh unto Me." li Hearken to Me every 
one of you and understand ! " " Perceive ye not and 
understand?" "All things that I have heard of my 
Father, I have made known unto you." His constant for- 
mula was : " He that hath ears to hear, let him hear! " 
which applied as much to the interest felt by the intelligence 
as to the disposition which lay in the will. 

His mode of teaching involved almost every form of 
arresting attention and producing an impression. He por- 
trayed the kingdom of Heaven in parables of the most 
diverse description ; some so plain as to clear up a 
whole situation ; some so obscure as to hold in reserve 
a lesson, of which time would develop the meaning; some 
with intimations so vast, so stupendous that the heaven 
and the earth seemed passing away. He spoke, sometimes,, 
in startling enigmas which roused thought, conjecture, 
speculation, inquiry ; sometimes in language as startling" 
for its hyperbole, in order to vivify to the utmost an essen- 
tial truth ; sometimes, again, in precepts so plain that the 
very children could understand them. Sometimes He 
spoke in statements which, like those to the woman of 
Samaria, widened as into infinitude the local horizon 
about Mount Gerizim or Jerusalem ; which like those in 
the Sermon on the Mount, revealed the Divine profundi- 
ties under the law and under all human life. He employed 
reasoning and argument. He appealed to the imagination, 
He struck indelible pictures upon the memory. He was 
ever speaking of the "Truth." Even at the last, He 
declared to Pilate that "to this end was He born, and for 
this cause came He into the world, that he should bear 
witness unto the Truth." His whole endeavor seemed to 
be to develope the capacity for Belief, and, when it was 
developed, it took the mental-ethical-spiritual name of 



30 GREAT MEANING OF METANOIA. 

" Faith," — another Greek word elevated into a transcen- 
dental meaning 1 . He used every credential which He brought 
with Him to fasten His personality upon the age, and to make 
Himself a vivid and memorable as well as a lovable pres- 
ence forever. Every sign and wonder was worked as much 
to prove His origin and authority as to express His lov- 
ing kindness and tender mercy. He was the sower who 
went out to sow. He left in that soil principles working, 
ideas germinating, thoughts springing, as well as feelings 
moved and affections stirred, the issues of which that soil 
very imperfectely comprehended until the ripening moment 
had come. He threw a mystical shadow over life which 
was to deepen into an eclipse of all that was earthly. He 
set forward its boundaries into the other world, and 
brought in the spirit of the heavenly life, the spirit of 
eternity amid things temporal. He revealed the existence 
of the absolute Right, the near presence of the love and of 
the will of God. 

With His disciples it was a constant, a growing Meta- 
noia. At first, they were full of joy, of anticipation, of 
triumph. They were not to fast : the bridegroom was 
with them. The sombre word " repentance" were sadly 
inadequate to express all that He had created. Doubtless, 
here and there, some, like Peter, astonished by this exhi- 
bition of power, fell down at His knees, saying : "Depart 
from me, for lam a sinful man, O Lord ! " ; or some, like 
Zacchaeus, also powerfully impressed, offered the fullest 
reparation for an evil life ; or some, like the woman that 
was a sinner, loved much because they had been forgiven 
much. Such results were the inevitable, as they were the 
designed consequence of His personal influence, and, 
sooner or later, they were to come upon all. But the 
influence began in the intellect awakened, the intellect 
overwhelmed with a new perception, with a new convic- 
tion, with a belief in His authority, and a belief in what 
He revealed. 

And, as if to indicate to His disciples that the Metanoia 
was even then by no means complete, He told them at the 
close that " He had yet many things to say unto them, 
but that they could not bear them now. Howbeit when 
He, the Spirit of Truth, should come, He would guide 
them into all Truth." " He should bring all things to their 
remembrance, whatsoever He Himself had said unto them." 

And, indeed, the Metanoia had not fully come. So little 
had they comprehended, so much in them still lay latent, 



GREAT MEANING OF METANOIA. 31 

that his death was a catastrophe which ended all their 
hope. Their Metanoia entered upon a new stage when He 
rose from the dead. Their "sorrow was turned into joy," 
as He had predicted. But, even then, the consummate 
hour had not come ; and, even then, they could not have 
fully taken in His last injunction " that Metanoia and 
remission of sins should be preached in His Name," that 
they should "go teach all nations, baptizing them in the 
name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy 
Spirit." 

The Metanoia was not complete until the hour when the 
prophecy of John the Baptist was literally fulfilled, until 
the Christ Himself, was, so to speak, complete : until He 
came again " Baptizing them with the Holy Spirit and 
with fire " ; until, as the Great Harvester, He thrust His 
winnowing fork into the harvest He had planted, and cast 
it against the wind of that Spirit to thoroughly purge His 
floor. 

Then, in the outburst of that mighty wind, came the 
Metanoia complete, upon the disciples, upon the age. The 
whole original impression of Him revived, and a deeper 
than that impression was inspired. The world went into 
shadow. The Kingdom of Heaven was on Earth. They 
had "the Mind of Christ." 

But what was its first manifestation ? A public phenom- 
enon on the Day of Pentecost. There was a vocal out- 
burst of Divine ecstasy. Whether they spoke in languages, 
or in mystical utterances, it was the release of their pent- 
up souls when the full realization came upon them. The 
multitude cried in wonder, as they saw and heard, "What 
meaneth this ? " or in mockery, "These men are full of new 
wine ! " Their amazement and scepticism were equally 
met by an illuminating speech from Peter : a statement of 
facts, an argument from prophecy, irresistably concentrated 
upon the event which had shaken Jerusalem fifty days be- 
fore ; a speech which leaped from the supreme Metanoia 
of the moment and carried all its impalpable power into 
the minds before him. The same light then broke upon 
them. "Men! brethren!" they exclaimed, "What shall 
we do ? " the very words of the multitudes to John the 
Baptist when all this was foreshadowed ; and then they 
heard again the burden of the Baptist and of the Christ : 
" METavofoare \ Take a New Mind ! and be baptized every 
one of you in the name of Jesus Christ ! ". The same thing 
occurred when, shortly afterward, a miracle was performed. 



32 GREAT MEANING OF METANOIA. 

There was another convincing statement with the same 
exhortation. Observe the antithesis. "I wot that through 
ignorance, {hyvotav,) ye did it. Meravo^aarel Take a 

New Mind, therefore, and be converted, that your sins 
may be blotted out, so that, (birog,) times of refreshing may 
come from the presence of the Lord." How little the 
" Repent" of our version takes in the compass of the 
counsel! They had "repented" already, in the usual 
sense, they were deeply penitent, they were " pricked to 
the heart." But Peter made them understand that com- 
punction or any other like feeling was not all. Their 
minds must seize the new situation, so that God might 
send Him who was before proclaimed to them, Jesus 
Christ. (Gr.) They were to turn from ignorance to 
knowledge. 

And now, one other stage, which will carry us even 
deeper into the Scriptural aspect of this subject. 

If ever there was an instance of Metanoia under all the 
conditions which could exhibit the fullest import of the 
word, it was that of the conversion of S. Paul. It would 
almost seem as if the change of mind in a man of such 
personal greatness, moral strength, and conspicuous record, 
had been brought about in the sudden, public way it was 
in order to put into a concentrated form, and reveal on 
the grandest scale, a process and a fact which in ordinary 
cases could not be so visibly represented. We have here 
in colossal proportions, and, potentially, in a moment of 
time the Metanoia of which all Christian experience is 
made. That such a thing could and did take place in the 
case of a man of this intelligence has been cited as one of 
the strongest evidences of the Christian Religion. What 
he was before the change we know. First of all, one of 
the most richly endowed intellects and one of the most 
powerful natures ever known among men. Following upon 
that, intensified by his proud Judaism, by his narrow 
Pharisaism, by his profound knowledge of Jewish law and 
traditions, by his devotion to the religion of his fathers, he 
turned out a zealot in the cause of Judaism, so dark, bigoted, 
and bloody, as to make him a leader in the persecution of 
the new faith. He had proven impenetrable to the story 
and teaching of Jesus, to the accounts of His miracles, 
even to the signs and wonders wrought in His name by 
the Apostles. But in the very hour when his mind was 
most turbulent, vengeful, and determined, Jesus meets 
him in the way. As soon as the conviction of his error had 



GREAT MEANING OF METANOIA. 33 

broken upon his mind, as visibly as the great light which 
had blinded his eyes, his first inquiry was, like all previous 
disciples, "What must I do ? " " I have appeared unto thee 
for this purpose," answered Jesus, "to make thee a minister 
and a witness both of those things which thou hast seen, 
and of those things in the which I will appear unto thee, 
delivering thee from the people, and from the Gentiles, 
unto whom now I send thee, to open their eyes y and to turn 
them from darkness to light '." "Whereupon," as he says, 
"I was not disobedient to the heavenly vision" but 
showed unto them "that they should take upon them a 
new mind, (/ueravoEiv,) and turn to God, and do works worthy 

of the Metanoia," (afjia rrjg /ieravoiag.) 

When the scales had fallen from his eyes, his mind be- 
held no other vision than of Christ. He that had then met 
him was thenceforth ever before him. The narrow, prej- 
udiced, sectarian Pharisee was changed into an Apostle 
of Christianity, so magnificent, so enlightened, so liberal 
in his conception of it that none of his new brethren could 
keep pace with him, as even all present ecclesiasticism is 
in danger of falling behind him. 

All the marks of the Metanoia are here. It was the 
mind changed through circumstance : for when he beheld 
the supernatural presence of the Lord, the whole vision of 
his error burst upon him. It was the mind changed in 
understanding : for he spent three years of solitude in 
Arabia, receiving the fullest indoctrination from Christ. 
It was the mind changed by evolution : for, with the root 
of the matter in him, he now grasped entirely the trans- 
cendent change of situation, and came forth able, above all 
others, to reconcile the old economy with thenew, to proclaim 
the advanced principles of the Gospel with a profundity of 
spiritual discernment which no one should ever exceed, and 
to be the most powerful advocate Christianity should ever 
know. It was the mind changed in disposition : for, from 
the fierce, proud, intolerant, self-sufficient son of the law, 
he became the patient, humble, compassionate, affectionate 
servant of Christ, " all things to all men." It was the mind 
changed by development : for the same capacity for faith, 
for zeal, for force and energy, for religious devotion, was 
now carried over and enlarged in the interest of a cause 
as new and as vast as the whole just revealed purpose of 
God in man. It was the mind changed by revolution : for 
it was a revolt from Judaism in its narrow Rabbinical form, 
a total break with the artificial, superstitious, selfish system 



34 GREAT MEANING OF METANOIA. 

under which he had been born and bred, and a leap into 
the large spiritual consciousness of Christ Himself. It was 
the mind changed before repentance set in, which repent- 
ance accompanied, which repentance intensified, which 
repentance filled with a due apprehension of the Cross, but 
of the extent of whose growth in its change, of the extent 
of whose apprehension of his Lord, the word " repentance" 
in its fullest theological acceptation, could never follow, 
compass, or describe. Nothing less than the word Metanoia 
can compass or describe it. For what was its most con- 
spicuous, foremost feature ? A profoundly illuminated in- 
telligence followed by a nature as profoundly penetrated. 
The "spiritual man" was there ; the "natural man" was 
there no longer, 

In the light of this word even the most unspiritual mind 
cannot fail in some degree of sympathy with S. Paul's 
enthusiasm in his work, or to understand the ecstasy with 
which he regarded the person of his Lord, or to know 
what he meant when he said that his "conversation," his 
daily life, was lived in heaven. The spiritual, so far as this, 
takes the look of the natural. 

When we open his Epistles, and read them from this 
point of view, with this word as their key, they all, — no 
matter what their occasion or what themes they passingly 
treat — take the character of the summons to the Metanoia. 
Back to this, in some form, they always come. He rings, 
as we said, endless changes upon the word. It appears in 
innumerable forms of expression. It would be one pro- 
longed and many-sided illustration of the idea, if we were 
to quote from him as profusely as we would like. But our 
space will only permit a selection of a few passages where 
the most direct reference is made, and where the "noetic 
faculty" is also implied. 

He said to the Romans: "Be not conformed to this 
world, but be ye transformed, (jueTa/iopcpovcBe transfigured) 
by the renewing of your mind (vovc.) " He said to the 
Corinthians : "We have the mind (wwc) of Christ. . . . 
We all . . are changed into the same image from glory 
to glory, even as by the Spirit of the Lord. ... If 
any man be in Christ, he is a new creature, old things are 
passed away, behold all things are become new." He said 
to the Ephesians, "That God . . may give unto you 
the spirit of wisdom (oo$iao) and revelation in the knowl- 
edge (eiriyvGxtei ) of Him (Christ), the eyes of your under- 
standing (diavoiac) being enlightened ; that ye may know 



GREAT MEANING OF METANOIA. 35 

etc." . . . " Henceforth walk not as other Gentiles 
walk in the vanity of their mind, {yo6q) having the under- 
standing (ttj diavoLg.) darkened, being alienated from the 
life of God through the ignorance (ayvocdv) that is in 
them. . . But ye have not so learned Christ, if so be 
that ye have heard Him, and been taught by Him, as the 
truth is in Jesus, that ye put off concerning the former con- 
versation, the old man . . and be renewed in the spirit 
of your mind (vobg); and that ye put on the new man." 
He said to the Colossians : " Seeing that ye have put off 
the old man with his deeds, and have put on the new man 
which is renewed in knowledge, after the image of Him 
that created Him." He said to Timothy: "The servant 
of the Lord . . must be apt to teach, patient, in meek- 
ness instructing those who oppose themselves, if God per- 
adventure will give them Metanoia unto the acknowledg- 
ing (etf kirlyvuffiv) of the truth." 

But we must now pass on to an occasion in which he 
used the word itself, and by force of circumstances, less in 
a spiritual than in an intellectual and popular sense. 

When he confronted the Stoics and Epicureans in the 
Areopagus, roused to indignation by the evidences of 
image worship around him, and to quick perception of the 
opportunity offered him by an Altar to the Unknown God 
— to him so near in association with the Unnamed .God of 
his own people, but to them, only, at the most, a philo- 
sophical dream — when, in coming before such an audience, 
he had to burn his Hebrew ships, for he could beat no 
retreat upon the traditions of his own religion, quote no 
Scriptures but those of their own poets, and reason 
with them only upon their own premises; when, if he 
spoke at all, he must speak to the intellect, and to an 
intellect which would care very little for an appeal to the 
heart and not even understand an allusion to " sin;" when 
all his tact and ingenuity were exerted toget uninterrupted 
to the " new thing " they desired to hear and he wished 
to announce; when he had stated the nature of the one 
living and true God in a way to command their respect, 
and in a way to enlarge their conception of Him who 
should remain no longer " Unknown," if he could reveal 
Him to their understanding — what did he say? " The times 
of ignorance God overlooked; but now he commandeth 
men that they shall all everywhere change their mind." 

fieravoeiv. * 



*See Revised Version in loc. 



36 GREAT MEANING OF MET AN 01 A. 

Without question, S. Paul spoke as near as he could to 
the sense of classic Greek under such Attic circumstances, 
and we are not justified in here interpreting the word in 
any other way. He could not have expected them to put 
the full construction upon it which lay in his own mind, 
and with which it must have vaguely rung in their ears as 
it came forthwith the tone of his own intense consciousness. 
All that they could have understood was an appeal " to 
change their views," to come to a conception of the Divine 
nature more worthy of those who were " the offspring of 
God," to accept this great knowledge, which he now com- 
municated, in place of the "ignorance" which their altar 
confessed. The very most that their usage could admit 
into the word he had employed was an ethical import, 
sometimes, though rarely attached to it, but it must have 
been in this instance very dimly discerned, if at all. If 
there was anything like " regret " to be felt, it was, most 
probably, only displeasure with themselves that they 
should have been so mistaken. Certainly nothing so strong 
as penitence could have been dreamed of by S. Paul. He 
was intent upon something beyond, to which the intellect- 
ual impression or emotion he had created would be a step- 
ping-stone, namely, "Christ." For this, and up to this, 
he would " change their mind." How utterly inconceiv- 
able, at any rate, is a call to "repentance," as it is trans- 
lated in our version, both the Old and the New, in the 
connection of such an attempt to commend the religion he 
preached to the confidence and respect of these specula- 
tive men ! 

We must leave to the reader the further examination of 
passages in the New Testament where Metanoia in some 
form appears, and is still rendered "repentance" in the 
New Version. Here they all are in a foot note, and he can 
judge for himself whether, in^every case, (and in some 
cases most expressly) a more distinct reference to the 
changed mind in the profound sense we have given it,, 
would not be an improvement upon the more emotional 
and less fruitful idea suggested by the word " repentance." 
It will be found used in many of these instances, not in a 
general but special application, when its great meaning is 
curdled, as it were, into the expression of a single feeling 
in relation to sin; when thought, perception, knowledge, 
conscience, penitence, and the will are combined into such 
a strong revolt of the entire man from an evil course, as to 
change the character of his life. Any rendering which 



GREAT MEANING OF METANOIA. 37 

Tceeps any of these powerful and necessary elements out of 
sight is more than an unfortuate one. * 

In all that we have now said we have shown ourselves 
anxious that, in the translated New Testament, the Sum- 
mons in the original proclamation of the Gospel should be 
made to appear as profound and significant as it really 
was, and thus be made to unite itself with the intellectual 
and spiritual life of the nineteenth century as keenly as it 
did with the first. We would have it a fresh, living, 
all-comprehensive, all-powerful Summons now. 

We desire this, first, in order that the unity of the New 
Testament may be seen to lie in it from the beginning as 
in a germ, and to branch and flower from it in every part 
as from a stem. We desire this, next, for the more import- 
ant and vital reasou, that the ethical and practical char- 
acter of the religion of Christ may be revealed in its real 
supremacy to the emotional theory which has so long dis- 
proportionately prevailed. But, above all, we desire it — 
above all, from its including these and comprehending more 
— because it implies the use of the entire nature of man, 
intellectual, moral, affectional, spiritual, his human part 
and his Divine part, in the act of apprehending and appro- 
priating the truth of God. The whole Nous is appealed 
to, the whole mind is engaged in seeing Him who is invis- 
ible, and in doing His will. For it is now the unhappy 
fact that the Christian religion is so specifically applied to 
one portion of this mind and to one state of it, that if the 
requisition were strictly insisted upon as a standard and 
test, many persons of the purest character and highest 
principle would be denied the name of Christian, though 
palpably actuated by the faith and spirit of Christ. The 
penitential condition is not all — however much it may be. 
The recognition of Christ may spring from a wider surface, 
and even a deeper principle than that one agonized nerve 
in the retina of the soul. 

" Metanoeite !" It is a generous word, looking out- 
wardly from the life that now is to that which is to come. 



* Meravoio) occurs : Matt, iii : 1; iv : 17; xi : 20, 21 ; xii : 41. Luke, 
i: 15; vi: 12. Luke x: 13; xi: 32; xiii: 3, 5; xv: 7, 10; xvi: 30; xvii: 3, 4. 
Acts ii : 38; iii: 19; viii:22; xvii : 30; xxvi: 20. 2 Cor. xii : 21. Rev. 
ii: 5 (twice); xvi: 21 (twice), 22; iii: 3, 19; ix: 20, 21; xvi: 9, 11. 

Merdvoia occurs: Matt, iii : 8. Lukeiii:8. Matt, iii: 11 ; ix: 13. Luke 
ii:i7. Luke v: 32. Luke 1:4. Luke iii: 3. Acts xiii: 24. Acts xix: 4. 
Lukexv: 7. xxiv: 47. Acts v:3i; xi:i8; xx; 21; xxvi; 20. Rom. ii; 4. 
2. Cor. vii; 9, 10. 2 Tim. ii; 25. Heb, vi; I, 6; xii; 17, 2 Pet. iii; 9. 



38 GREAT MEANING OF METANOIA. 

Let us have its equivalent in Gospel and Epistle wherever 
it appears. Let it speak to this age at least, in full not 
muffled articulation — to this age with its wide speculation 
upon the mystery of being, with its agnostic revolt from 
the religion that is preached, with its critical study of the 
historic Christ, and yet latent disposition to believe in 
Him. 

"Metanoeite !" It is time that the Herald uttered it 
again as He uttered it once. It bears to us the all-neces- 
sary message of contradiction, and the all-necessary 
announcement of a revolution. It brings with it the true 
and everlasting tidings — always news to blind and mortal 
men — that the apparent conditions of this life are the illu- 
sion of flesh and sense, and that the real conditions of life 
are the very reverse of what we are prone to think and 
believe. The eternal and the spiritual are all, the tempo- 
ral and the material are but the shadows of that substance. 

It were a bold word from any but a Divine mouth — we 
should say — and yet the human tongue has been uttering 
it, virtually, all along in another sphere. What has been 
the proclamation of Science in its own material world, but 
" Metanoeite ! change your mind from the near testimony 
of Sense to the distant witness of Discovery." Sense says : 
The sun rises in the east and revolves about the earth ; 
the earth is the centre of the celestial sphere. But Science 
— Knowledge — proclaims a contradiction, and, with it, a 
revolution : It is the earth that goes round the sun, the 
sun is but one of that starry host, the blue firmament melts 
into illimitable space ; it is an illuminated universe which 
lies out there, in which this apparently ponderous globe 
floats like an atom in a sunbeam. So Science, an echo of 
the Divine voice, has enlarged, reversed the whole con- 
sciousness of man. Her Metanoia has been proclaimed, not 
only here, but everywhere in her material field. Whither- 
soever she has gone, nature has inverted its apparent order, 
its phenomena have widened out into once occult principles, 
and the first human impression of them has had to be 
revoked. 

It is an image, a parallel, of the Christian faith. The 
whole universe of the Spiritual is likewise being revealed 
to the knowledge of mankind. Time is declared to be of 
Eternal moment, and death the fullness of life. We may 
discern the character of that other sphere by its inverse 
relation, point for point, to this. 

Given, then, we say, the intellectual realization of this 



GREAT MEANING OF METANOIA. 39 

to men, their moral consciousness will rise to it, their 
nature will enlarge with it, their hearts and their lives will 
deepen to the measure of it. They will revolt more and 
more, not from God, but from sin and from the world. 
This is conversion, this is the new birth from above. 

We can now imagine how, under such a conception, the 
pulpit would awake to the grandeur of its work, how the 
Church would awake to the grandeur of her cause. The 
themes of the one, the methods of the other would move 
with splendor and with power to one definite and mighty 
end : the Summoning of mankind to the Metanoia, this 
new mind, and the announcement of everything on the 
Divine side of life, which would inspire and create it. For 
we are just on the verge of a great epoch. All this intel- 
lectual activity in the material world is surely working 
toward a moment of reaction when the same intensity of 
movement will turn the other way, and the universal 
demand will be for a knowledge of the spiritual. The 
voice of Science, crying in its wilderness, will be found to 
have been preparing the way to this. It will turn out to 
be the "expectation" of this age. Out of its dust and 
ashes shall mount again the cry : " Metanoeite ! for the 
kingdom of Heaven is at hand ! " Let us see to it that 
neither the Bible, the Church, nor the pulpit, gives then 
an uncertain sound. 

But our space is exhausted : yet one word more to carry 
our theme to its most practical and highest point. We 
have said all when we say that Metanoia and Revelation 
are correlative terms, one always implying the other. As 
large, therefore, as we understand the Revelation to be, 
we must understand the Metanoia to be. They are recip- 
rocal, as they develope, in character and degree. In 
their meeting and blending within us, then, we become 
partakers of the Divine nature and are saved. What 
begins with being a " change of mind towards God" deep- 
ens and broadens, as our nature turns all its disk that way, 
into that supreme reflection of God in the soul, "faith in 
our Lord Jesus Christ." Faith is the Metanoia touched to 
the quick. Faith is the Metanoia when it has reached the 
vital fibres of our being : "the substance of things hoped 
for, the evidence of things not seen" : "God who com- 
manded the light to shine out of darkness, shining into our 
hearts to give the light of the knowledge of the glory of 
God in the face of Jesus Christ." So it is the Metanoia 
which is bearing us Heavenward in Him. " We are changed 



40 GREAT MEANING OF METANOIA. 

into the same image from glory to glory": "We were 
sometime darkness, but now are we light in the Lord." 
" We press toward the mark for the prize of the High Call- 
ing of God in Christ Jesus." More and more is the earthly 
nature dissolving away and releasing the heavenly one ; 
deeper and deeper is the transfiguration working within ; 
and it will not cease even when we have passed the gates 
of death, and 

" Heaven opens on our eyes ; our ears 
With sounds seraphic ring ! " 

What will be the inburst of another world upon the soul 
but the Change of Changes, the supreme Metanoia of the 
Eternal life I 

Treadwell Walden. 



EXTRACTS FROM LETTERS. 



From the Rev. Dr. Roberts, Prof, of Humanity in the University of St. An- 
drews (Scotland), Author of the " Companion to the Revised New Testament." 

"I have read with much interest your thoughtful and valuable paper 
on Metanoia, and I thank you for sending it to me. The expression 
1 repentance, though plainly inadequate as a translation of it, has so 
rooted itself in our language that it seems almost impossible to get rid of 
it. However, we have manifestly entered on an epoch of revision, and I 
trust you will bring your suggestions under the notice of anybody that 
may be appointed, in order, if possible, to provide an English Version of 
the New Testament which may meet with general acceptance. . . . 

From the same. 

"I hope some effectual means will be found for bringing your original 
and striking exposition of Metanoia under the notice of scholars in this 
country. I shall see that it is submitted to those of my colleagues who 
are likely to take an interest in the subject. With best regards, 

"Yours sincerely, ALEXANDER ROBERTS." 

From the Rev. Philip Schaff, D.D. 

"Many thanks to you for a copy of your able, excellent and truthful 

article on the meaning of Metanoia, which has my cordial approval. 

Conservatism prevented a change, and the difficulty of substituting a 

precise equivalent in one word. 

"PHTT.TP SCHAFF." 

From the Rev. Dr. Angus. 

"The subject has important bearings on scientific theology, and even 
more on practical life. 

"College, Regent's Park. W. ANGUS/' 

From the Rev. Dr. Howard Crosby. 

" I think you are quite right. I have always taught that the Metanoia 
of the Gospel was not a sorrow for sin, but an abandonment of sin. Its 
classical meaning is ' a change of view and plan,' as in that intensely in- 
teresting part of Thucydides where the Athenians order the destruction 
of the Mytileneans, and then on the next day repent. There is not a par- 
ticle of mourning over sin in that. Of course, where one repents (fiera- 
voel) from sin there will be a godly sorrow, but this is not in the word. 

"The Metanoia of the Jews was, as you say, a change of view (and 
plan) from the pronoian condition. Those at Pentecost thus repented, 
although, doubtless, the majority of them were truly godly men before. 

" HOWARD CROSBY." 

From the Rev. Dr. Warren, President of Boston University. 
" I thank you for your able article. It is a fresh contribution to the 
broader form of exegesis, and cannot fail to find a warm welcome among 
the thoughtful and devout. W. F. WARREN." 



42 EXTRACTS FROM LETTERS. 

From the Rev. Db. Plumptbe. 

" Pray accept my best thanks for your very suggestive paper. I quite 
agree with you as to the inadequacy of the accepted rendering of Metanoia, 
but do not see my way to a better one as yet. ' Eesipiscence ' was an at- 
tempt, but it proved abortive. * Change of mind,' or 'principles' or 
•heart' is cumbrous, and leaves the nature of the change undefined. 

"Bickley Vicarage, Kent E. H. PLXJMPTEE. " 

From the Rev. Phillips Bbooks, D.B. 
" I have just read your ' Metanoia ' through from beginning to end, and 
I want to tell you how much I enjoyed it, and how much I thank you for 
sending it to me. It is full of inspiration. It makes one think of Chris- 
tian faith as positive and constructive, and not merely destructive and 
remedial. It makes the work of Christ seem worthy of Christ. I thank 
you truly, both for writing it and for giving it to me. 
"Your sincere friend, 
" Boston, Mass. PHILLIPS BEOOKS." 

From the Rev. De. Mulfoed, Author of "The Republic of God," etc. 

*' I beg to acknowledge your essay, which I have read with interest. It 
has very great value. It gives the view of this term which I have long 
held. 

"This is the one term which connects most clearly the errand of St. 
John the Baptist with the message of the Gospel. 

" It has more direct and full significance than those to which I note a 
reference in Hausrath's Times of Jesus, tr. II, 120, as I read. 

"The grammarians have always underrated De Quincey. 

" Cambridge, Mass. ELISHA MULFOED." 

From the Eev. Benjamin Feanexin, D.D., Author of " The Creed and Modern 

Thought" 

"May I venture to express the great pleasure and sense of mental bene- 
fit with which I have read your article in the July number of the Ameri- 
can Church Review. 

"You have undoubtedly made an intrinsic contribution to the theology 
of the age, and given an illustration of what many have thought and some 
have said, viz., that 'Catholic Theology' is as much alive in this age, and 
as well adapted to current thought, as it ever has been. The article, 
while learned and able, of course, is abreast of the age, and takes that 
humanly sympathetic, yet distinctively Christian stand, which primitive 
Christianity occupied. 

"As a work emanating from the theological school to which you are 
popularly assigned, it of course looks at the truth from its own point of 
view. It does so admirably, however, and will, I hope, so permeate the 
mind of preachers, that the Gospel, on its human side, may be better 
preached, and men induced to recognize and develop, in mind and heart, 
their original God-likeness. 

"It gives me pleasure to express, in this way, my personal obligation. 

''Shrewsbury, N. J. B. FEANKLTN." 



EXTRACTS FROM LETTERS. 43 

From, the Rev. Db. Gabbison, Rector of St. PauTs Church, Camden, 2?. J. 
{This letter contains a valuable contribution to the Subject.) 

" I hope the old saw, ' better late than never,' will hold good in my ac- 
knowledgment, at this late day, of the interest and value of your article 
on 'Metanoia.' I have had my pen in hand many times to do it, but 
there was so much I wished to say about it that each time I waited for a 
'more convenient season,' until now, in utter despair of finding leisure 
for this, I cannot refrain longer to tell you how profoundly important I 
feel the points you make to be. I have been so deeply impressed with 
them for twenty years that I scarcely or never use the word * Repent ' in 
any of its Bible references without pausing to reiterate the true meaning 
of the mental and spiritual process implied in the Metanoian. And I am 
sure that many of our most diastrous failures in commending Christian- 
ity to unbelieving minds, especially minds of a manly character, have 
their cause just here. You have thought so much on the bearings of the 
idea that I need not tell you how or why. 

" What I wanted, however, especially to enlarge upon were certain of the 
collateral relations of the word, and its psychological connections, which 
I have felt to be at the same time confirmations of your views and expres- 
sions of its great meaning. I can only hint at them, as it has been my 
inability to write more fully which has let me hitherto, and I doubt not 
but they have occurred to you. 

" 1. One of these is the analogy of the use of the word in the Greek of 
the LXX., wherein very often the passages rendered 'Repent, etc.,' in 
the A. V. are given in the Septuagint by H-eravoieiv, etc., with a most de- 
cided advantage to the clearness, consistency and satisfactoriness of 
the passage. 

" 2. The remarkable significance of the word vov£ and all its derivatives 
in the philosophic language of that age, as we learn this from the Greek, 
especially the Alexandrian writers. And I more and more believe that 
the language of the writers of the New Testament had much in common 
with this. I cannot pause even to outline my grounds for this, but they 
are so strong to my mind that if I were in the middle instead of near the 
end of my mental life work, I would make it the theme of an elaborate 
volume. Now, in all the prevalent thought of that time, 'thought' (?ov£ 
as its reality) and ' being ' were only two sides of one and the same essence. 
"With them the Real was not, as with us, the Material, but the Noietic. 
"What on the side of consciousness and actual verity was voieii/ (thought), 
on its side of real existence was etvai. To think was ' to be, ' and ' to be * 
was essentially thought. The Spiritual was the Real, and the only Real 
was the Spiritual. (And herein lies the essence of the endless discussion 
on the Real Presence. The hard-headed Latin could never see that any- 
thing was Real that he could not represent as quasi material.) 

"Now, with this conception of voiei</, go back to Metanoia, and we have 
the complete expression and magnificent sweep of the full thought. In 
changing the voieiv of the man he has become changed in the very essence 



44 EXTRACTS FROM LETTERS. 

of his "vat, «all things have become new.' I need not evolve the thought 
farther. It lies at the foundation of the whole Alexandrian, or rather of 
the whole philosophic thought of that age, and in Plotinus is developed 
to the Dialectic system with which he hoped to rival Christianity, but 
which, by its one-sided character, made it only a sublime dream for the 
few instead of a divine life for the many. 

" 3. As a relique of my old medical life. Insanity, is not, as I think, 
an error of reasoning. "Who reasons so inexorably as an insane man ? * I 
am — my mind (vov£) tells me — a king. Therefore I can and will do as a 
king;' and all he does follows on strictest reasoning from his voclv. 
Change his essential accepted thought — self — and at once he ' is ' a differ- 
ent man. As he 'thought' in his essential self, so he 'was.' His iJ-eravoLav 
at once changes his entire 'being.' I have often presented this as a ter- 
rible analogy to the condition of man as a sinner. By nature he accepts 
as the essential fact of his being in his thought, ' this world, self, sin, as 
all real, all sufficient. ' Christ comes and says, 'Your whole being and 
thought are wrong (/meTai'oeiTe) ; let your whole being and thought turn 
from this. It is a lie, and your life, based on it, a delusion, for there is a 
kingdom of the heavens which is the truth,' etc. Here, again, I only put 
a finger mark, but the meaning of the whole is, I thank you very heartily 

for your admirably and needed paper. 

"J. F. GARRISON." 

From the Rev. Edward T. Babtlett, Hector of St. Luke's, Matteawan, N. Y. 

"I am greatly indebted to you for your essay on the great New Testa- 
ment Word. At a glance I saw much of its value, but now that I have 
carefully studied it, I think it wonderful and of permanent worth for its 
scholarship and its true fervor, the like of which in combination I do not 
Temember to have ever seen. The ability with which you present your 
great subject and marshal your grand argument seems to me absolutely 
perfect, and should make this essay one that will be the standard mono- 
graph on the subject. 

''If I could wish for any addition to your treatment of the subject, it 
would be as to the fuller development of the truth, that the change of the 
mind itself may precede and lead to a change of circumstance, the truth 
which Dr. Bushnell, e. g., brings out in those two tremendous sermons, 
* The Bad Consciousness Taken Away,' and • The Bad Mind makes a Bad 
Element,' in his 'Christ and His Salvation.' I did not mean to say this, 
but will venture to let it go, almost sure, though, that upon further study 
of your essay, which I intend to make, I shall find that you have given 
that truth all the emphasis it needed, and that I have been mistaken. 

" Again I thank you for the keen pleasure you have afforded me in your 
beautiful paper. 

"EDWARD T. BARTLETT." 

From the Rev. De. Powebs, Rector of Christ Church, Bridgeport, Conn. 
"I need hardly say that the article is scholarly, brilliant, exhaustive; 
in literary merit admirable, in learning full, in logic conclusive. I have 



EXTRACTS FROM LETTERS, 45^ 

always believed the doctrine since I fairly understood the Gospel. You 
have done a good service in this elegant and powerful portraiture or 
the great truth of Christian life. 

"H. N. POWEKS." 

From Gen. Daniel Ullmann. 

" I have not only read but studied it. . . . To say that we have been 
delighted with its perusal, and that we greatly admire it, is but scant 
praise. The paper should have a large circulation, especially among the 
learned men of the churches. I thank you for the opportunity you have 
given me to study it, for reflection on the materials you have thus fur- 
nished me has cleared and methodized my ideas upon what I accept as 
a vital point; evidently Meianoia is the pivotal word of the Christian dis- 
pensation. Indeed Metanoia has haunted me for some time, sleeping and 
waking, introducing me as it has to so many wide fields of thought. . .. 
As a lawyer, I say decidedly, • You have made out your case.' 

"DANIEL ULLMANN." 



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